Language Teacher Psychology

Some of you are already aware that Sarah Mercer and I recently published an edited collection, Language Teacher Psychology(Multilingual Matters, 2018). Sarah and I have already blogged about this elsewhere, but I would also like to add some more thoughts about the book in the paragraphs that follow.

This collection was prompted by our concern that, as the field makes increasingly good progress towards understanding the psychological processes associated with language learning, it seems to be focusing rather too narrowly on the learner and assuming — as Zoltán Dörnyei points out in the foreword to the collection — that the teacher is just ‘one of many factors affecting learner success’. In some ways, such a focus seems natural, even inevitable. For one thing, communicative language teaching is underpinned by a learner-focused ideology, and perhaps rightly so. To this one might add that reaching a large enough population of practicing teachers to study has always been pragmatically challenging.

As teachers and teacher educators, Sarah and I felt very strongly that this was an imbalance that needed to be redressed. We can point out to a copious amount of research that shows how much of learning is affected by teachers, and from this it must follow that a better understanding of what teachers think, feel and do is requisite to improving learning outcomes. But even more importantly, this book is our way of asserting our fundamental belief in the teachers’ value as professionals and as people. In the context of a culture of narrowly-defined accountability, which brings teachers under sustained scrutiny, and even occasionally hostile public discourse, this was a statement that we felt compelled to make.

As editors, we have had the privilege of working with some of the most inspiring scholars in Language Learning and Teaching Psychology, as well as authors who are at the start of what seems like a very promising academic trajectory. The collection consists of 19 chapters, which cover familiar topics, such as well as topics that have only recently began to receive empirical attention. These chapters are listed below:

Working on this book and with this impressive team of contributors has been was a very rewarding experience for me. As a newcomer to language learning and teaching psychology, engaging with the ideas of some of the most influential scholars in the field gave me a unique opportinuty to learn from their accummulated experience. Having the support of one of the best production teams in the industry also meant that the process of putting the collection together was a much more enjoyable experience than it could otherwise have been.

The book is available in hardcover, paperback and electronic editions from Amazon or directly from the publishers. I hope you enjoy reading it, and I would very much appreciate any feedback or thoughts you might want to share in the comments or the contact page.